


Of Bones and Love

by Carenejeans



Category: Highlander: The Series
Genre: M/M, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-12
Updated: 2010-01-12
Packaged: 2017-10-06 05:13:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/50034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carenejeans/pseuds/Carenejeans
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Drifting apart... drifting together...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Bones and Love

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Highlander Lyric Wheel, October 12, 2004
> 
> Thanks to Tehomet and C.M. Decarnin for being patient betas!

Methos took a sip of hot black coffee and turned the page of his book without   
looking at it. He had picked a table close to the door, where the bright yellow   
lights of the cafe contrasted with the grey morning air outside. Here he could   
sit pretending to read, sampling everything with caffeine, and watching the   
couple at a table on the edge of the sidewalk. He studied them as one would   
read tea-leaves in a cup, or the cast of slender sticks on cloth, for an omen.   
For a sign.

He could tell they'd been together for a long time. He could tell they had   
once loved each other deeply. Now -- their love hadn't ended, but it had become   
a dry desert between them. He watched them speak without talking, exchanging   
glances at the coltish flirtation of a pair of students walking by -- then sharing   
a shadow that fell over both their faces. She sipped at her cappuccino, he bent   
over his espresso, drinking in its bitter darkness. They looked companionable,   
if you didn't look too closely, but Methos was looking closely, and he could   
see the knife's edge between them. He shivered a little. She looked good in   
black.

Methos turned his cup between his fingers for a moment, then poured a liberal   
swirl of cream into his own black coffee. He took a long sip, and exhaled slowly.   
Better. Absently, he ran his hand under his collar, remembering, feeling again   
the cold steel of Duncan's sword against his neck. Duncan, he thought, looked   
best in ivory. It didn't stop a knife's edge from being sharp. His eyes strayed   
to the corner of the cafe window, where he could just see the corner of Duncan's   
building, where Duncan would be preparing himself, warrior-like, for his contests   
of the morning -- a run perhaps, T'ai chi in the dojo, or even a round with   
the punching-bag, if he awoke to the same cold loneliness Methos did, and if   
his loneliness was still shot through with the hot anger Methos had seen in   
his eyes the night before, as Methos stood at the lift, his bags packed, the   
goodbye stuck in his throat.

Methos was too weary to feel anger, even at himself. He just felt lost. He'd   
walked most of the night, only to find he had circled back, and stood on the   
sidewalk in front of Duncan's building like a moth just out of reach of the   
flame. Warnings so deep and old as to be instinctual pulled him away, told him   
to run. A different instinct, equally as old but grating and rusty from disuse,   
whispered down his bones -- _fall_.

But the dawn was too gray, and Duncan's building was too dark. Methos had fled   
to the sanctuary of the cafe. For coffee, for warmth, and for answers from this   
chance pair of oracles.

How long did it take for love to run cold? Love ran on its own time; every   
love affair had its different way of winding out, or down, or too tight to bear.   
By objective reckoning, mortal lives and mortal loves were brief, when compared   
to his own long span. He'd had sixty eight wives, again as many common-law and   
lawless consorts, countless lovers and casual bedmates. Written down in a chronicle,   
their names, if he could remember them all, would be markers along his drawn-out   
centuries, with a pathetically short span of years between one and the next.   
But -- he opened his eyes and stared out at the street, the scene so different   
and yet so like every other street scene he'd ever watched -- he sometimes thought   
his life was one long string of forevers.

The woman in black leaned towards her companion, and for an instant they seemed   
joined in an affection as strong as it was dry. The bones of their love were   
still there; belly to belly they would scrape up against its hard relics.

The man laughed at something she whispered to him and Methos felt a sort of   
shock go through him. Suddenly Duncan stood before him in his mind's eye, with   
that grin on his face that warmed Methos clear to the bottoms of his feet and   
made him want to sink to his knees -- and he had, often enough, joyfully and   
gratefully. He -- but here the waiter intervened, placing a warm croissant on   
the table before him. Methos picked it up, and put it down. He licked his fingers.   
The buttery taste was too sweet for remembered salt, and he rested his chin   
in his hands and looked down at his book, turning over the pages of memory,   
reading Duncan in every line.

Sometimes, in the night, Methos would awaken next to Duncan. Sometimes he would   
hold himself still and listen to Duncan breathe. Sometimes he would stir a little,   
and Duncan would turn to him, awake after all, and sometimes they would fall   
asleep in each other's arms, as dawn turned the loft silver blue.

Or he might be reading, his ears attuned to the sounds of Duncan in the shower,   
and thoughts of steam and wetness and slick skin would get all mixed up with   
whatever he was reading, until Methos would run his hands through his hair and   
throw the book down in exasperated lust. Duncan seemed to know when this happened,   
because he'd emerge from the shower, drenched, naked, droplets clinging to the   
ends of his hair and sliding down his fine dark skin, and he'd dive at Methos,   
pulling at his clothes and tumbling them both to the floor before he got Methos   
stripped bare and almost as wet as he was.

Remembered pleasure twisted like pain in Methos's chest. But wasn't pain better   
than dry dust? Methos's unseeing gaze left the book and sharpened to focus on   
the couple near the sidewalk. The sun was higher now. Morning sunlight glinted   
off a tiny silver spoon as she stirred her coffee; he had put on a pair of sunglasses.   
Love didn't die, it just went dry, fading into the sunlight.

Methos nodded to the waiter, and his coffee was replenished. He sipped it slowly,   
and let it scald his tongue.

The man had finished his espresso, and was, Methos thought, wondering whether   
to get another to jangle his nerves enough to feel the blood in his heart. The   
woman was lighting a cigarette. She checked her makeup. He poked idly at some   
little instrument. They could have been on opposite shores of a summer-dry riverbed.

Living could be a fate worse than death, Methos thought, smiling sourly. The   
weak joke couldn't cover the chill he felt as he thought that these two could   
be in their graves, and their graves forgotten, and the city around them changed   
beyond recognition -- gone to dust as dry as the bones of their love -- and   
yet he and Duncan could still be standing.

In the darkest part of his heart, he envied them.

Once, long before they'd become lovers, he and Duncan been reading, companionably   
off in their different worlds -- and Duncan suddenly stood, threw his book down   
and stalked out of the loft, leaving Methos staring after him, astonished. After   
a while, he'd gone down to the dojo, expecting to find Duncan working out his   
feelings or performing katas to find his balance. Instead, he found him sitting   
in the middle of the dojo, cross-legged on the floor, in the dark. Methos had   
hesitated, and then dropped down to sit facing him, with their knees almost   
touching.

In the half-light, he could see Duncan's face lined with pain, and -- daringly   
\-- he reached out to touch his cheek gently. It was wet. Methos drew his hand   
back quickly, folded his hands in his lap, and waited.

Finally Duncan spoke. "How do you do it? How have you--" He stopped.

Methos sighed. "Feeling the weight of your years, MacLeod?"

Duncan put his head in his hands, and rubbed his face. "Ach-- aye."

Methos knew this feeling, knew it like an old friendly enemy, and he knew this   
was hardly the first time Duncan had felt it. But he felt a twinge of guilt   
anyway, certain that his own years -- centuries -- millennia -- had spooked   
his friend.

So he took a deep breath and put on his best lecturer voice. "Look MacLeod,   
it gets to us all, but you have to keep standing. Because the alternative--"

"The alternative is unthinkable. I know," said Duncan. The irritation in his   
voice was encouraging. Methos forged ahead.

"The alternative, I was going to _say_, is a short sharp shock--" he ran his   
finger along the base of Duncan's throat swiftly -- "a bloody mess for the watchers   
to clean up, your body moldering under a tombstone and your quickening in the   
bastard who took your head."

Duncan blinked. He smiled briefly and the flash of his white teeth in the darkness   
gave Methos's heart a quick jolt. But then Duncan frowned again. "I've taken   
so many quickenings," he said softly. "I just -- I wonder what it's like-- from   
the other side."

"Don't be morbid," Methos said, putting as much grumpy elder statesman into   
his voice as he could. Duncan smiled again, and Methos marveled at the way the   
man could bounce in a moment from black despair to the more sanguine mood that   
made him stand and stretch, for all the world as if waking from a pleasant sleep.   
Methos watched Duncan's body arch and sway in the darkness, and felt himself   
grow hard. Duncan had stood up gracefully as a tiger and offered his hand. Methos   
took it and scrambled to his feet more awkwardly, feeling Duncan must see his   
confusion and desire. But Duncan had only smiled and walked to the lift, though   
Methos was sure he'd held onto his hand just a fraction of a second longer than   
he'd needed to.

Methos turned from these thoughts to the riddle of the couple at the cafe table.   
The man had ordered another espresso and lifted the tiny cup slowly to his lips.   
The woman watched him without a change of expression, but Methos could feel   
sex spark along some private wavelength between them, chill and chaste, but   
also deep, and as black and strong as the coffee that made the man's eyes close   
in pleasure.

The first time Duncan had said Methos's name, so unexpectedly and with such   
wonder, it had been like a quickening forking to his brain, heart and sex. It   
had taken them long enough to come to the point, true, and when they did, it   
had all the subtlety of a pair of bulls locking horns... Methos paused with   
his cup to his lips, amused despite his pain. Yes, Duncan -- a bull. And so   
easily led by red flags. Oh, yes. But sex was one thing. Love was something   
else again, and it had taken Methos, at least, even longer to come to _that_   
particularly double-edged point. Duncan was a lot quicker to love, he rushed   
towards intimacy like -- yes, like a bull towards a red flag. And he blundered   
around like the bull in the proverbial china shop. You just -- Methos set his   
cup down, his coffee forgotten -- you just wanted to hold him still, and then,   
holding him, you felt his heart beat so madly against yours, and you were lost.

The woman in black shook back her hair and smoothed it away from her face with   
blunt fingers that held Methos momentarily entranced. He squinted and tried   
to see if she wore a ring. Not that it mattered. Neither law nor custom could   
bind them together more tightly than their own cold passion.

"Never one of us," he'd told Duncan, as much to keep him at arm's length as   
anything else. He'd been close to other immortals, in friendship and more, but   
not many; and had never felt such a bone-deep desire to _stay_ that he felt   
for Duncan. Cassandra -- no. If there had ever been anything between them worth   
salvaging, untouched by blood or death, it was far too late, and there was nothing   
left now but rage and regret. Byron had been -- Byron. He'd had a passion for   
passion, more than for people, and it had burned hot and brief. Methos had never   
expected to love Bryon "til death." He had never expected to love anyone to   
the end of his life.

Never, until now.

Duncan made friends and alliances and even deeper commitments with other immortals   
that lasted centuries. Amanda breezed in and out of Duncan's life at her own   
whim, and he accepted it with a "glad to see you coming and glad to see you   
go" philosophy, though he knew Duncan sometimes missed her more than he let   
on.

But he wasn't Amanda, and he had the stone-cold knowledge that his leaving   
Duncan would hurt him in a different and deeper way. He stared bleakly at the   
window. If he left, he left for good.

The couple at the curbside were standing, performing all the little awkward   
things you do when you leave a cafe, gathering themselves up to head off apart   
together. Methos wondered where they were going next. Home, perhaps, to sit   
in different rooms, or maybe they'd take a walk in the park and talk a little   
bit, have a conversation they've had too many times before, and will have many   
times again, until they had no more breath for words, for each other, at all.   
As he watched the woman leave a tip on the table and the man put on a hat with   
a low brim, Methos felt suddenly bereft, abandoned. He wondered if Duncan was   
back at the loft now, and whether he should go to him, or sit alone for a while   
longer, let the waiter take away the croissant he'd shredded on his plate and   
ask for something more bitter. His two oracles hadn't answered his questions,   
he'd cast the runes but got no certain reply. He didn't know if what he and   
Duncan had would fade to grey or end in blood or just... end. He didn't know   
whether to run or to stay.

He watched the couple disappear around the corner. He closed his book and then   
everything around him seemed to come into focus and sound as he felt it -- the   
familiar presence that jangled deep in his bones and pierced his defenses, setting   
off a sort of panicky pleasure, half pain and half --

The cafe, the coffee cup, the table, fell away and as the presence flowed over   
him Methos could almost feel the muscles in Duncan's back under the palms of   
his hands; he could see Duncan's brown eyes go dark with passion; he could taste   
him -- his tongue, his cock, the salt of his skin. Methos sat in a sort of synesthesia   
as he felt the warmth of Duncan's mouth in the gleam of a sugar bowl, and the   
bark of a dog in the street almost overwhelmed him with the remembered scent   
of Duncan's hair. A car horn honked, a girl behind him laughed, an unlikely   
pink truck trundled past the window, and all of them tasted of an exquisite   
joy that filled him with despair because he'd almost closed himself to it forever.

Methos stood slowly, leaning into the presence like a traveler leaning into   
the winds of home. He was ready to meet Duncan. Now, and every day for the rest   
of his life.

And there he was.

* * *

Bones of love

words: John Porter, music: John Porter

She's sipping a cappuccino  
Like a cat sipping out of a bowl  
He's black espresso  
To start his heart when it gets cold  


He's thinking 'cognac'  
But afraid his hands might shake  
She's checking her make-up  
Her smile's giving nothing away  


You better kill me before I kill you  
You look good in black  
Pay the bill and keep on walking  
Get a hole in their back  


Two faded tourists  
Their visas have long expired  
Two forgotten journalists  
Whose headlines have retired  


What's that in his pocket?  
They aint Chinese banknotes  
What's that in her handbag?  
That's no bar of gold.  


Two suntanned lovers  
Love didn't die, it just went dry  
Fading into the sunlight  
Those bones of love passing by  



End file.
